A general slice of life from a 40 soon to be 50 something husband, father, mountain biker,... Whatever I am into, I am REALLY into. Life is always better with gear. This blog follows my interests to a high level of mumbo jumbo detail

Thursday, February 23, 2006

One dojo philosophy

I just posted about a new book about power training. Yet I am not sure I'm going to get it.

Lately, I've been trying to limit my extracurricular activities. Family, work, training, skills work, keeping 5 bikes operational, and writing for this and the Biking Hub is about all I can handle. I've got this sickness where if I get into something new, I obsess about it and focus a lot of energy on it. I am trying hard to just keep the flow going now, and not get all into something.

My training plan is working well right now. I believe it is providing a good return on investment and seems to be working with my avaiable time and mentality. So far I've been able to keep focus and motivation day to day. Basically I am happy with my dojo.

In the past I've followed a Sponge type of philosophy. Basically read everything you can get your hands on, then filter from there. This thinking allows you to keep an open mind and see what is out there. But it lacks focus and concentration. I'm learning that improvement comes very slowly over the course of months and months, year to year. When you bounce back and forth from one thing to another, there is no continuity to build upon. I think this is one of the reasons I never really improved much early on in my cycling.

Reading too many books right now would instill a second guessing mentality which is very detrimental to any training program. It's not like I am blindly following something. I do understand the rationale behind it and Dave answers all my questions. But it is so easy to read or hear about new stuff and start questioning the current plan.

It's just like golf. You can go from one school/pro to another and keep changing to the new dojo. But every time you sort of start over.

Regardless of your dojo, the most important thing is to find a philosophy/coach/plan, that you believe in and understand. With belief comes commitment. With commitment comes focus. Once you find it stick with it, for a while. 6 months a year maybe. Yes I know, a lifetime to the modern internet generation. The second you start to second guess you either need to get some answers to your questions or you need to find a new dojo.

Training with the constant questions like "What about this?" or "Maybe I should be doing this because such and such pro is doing it" etc... is going to kill you.